The five models on loan from The Lighthouse were made by Cemal Ozturk of Glasgow-based Ozturk Modelmakers. They are based on plans submitted by Mackintosh early in his career for public architecture competitions, run by the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Glasgow International Exhibition 1901 Building Committee. 

Although none of these designs were competition winners, they received notable media attention and are exemplary of the innovative and elegantly refined style for which Mackintosh remains one of the most influential and celebrated architects of the 20th century.

Mackintosh approached his architectural drawings like an artist would a canvas, using watercolour to suggest colour-ways and pen and ink to note dimensions, plans and elevations of buildings. While we cannot know with absolute certainty what these imprecise designs were supposed to show, the many existing Mackintosh buildings in Glasgow provide a good indication.

The drawings and documentations were therefore able to provide a starting point for Ozturk to respond to, with many of the decisions surrounding materials, proportions and finish open to modern interpretation. The materials used were chosen for their precision and ability to highlight the detail and style of the designs, rather than their ability to realistically depict them. In these ways Ozturk offers us a novel way of appreciating Mackintosh’s prolific and iconic work.

Competition Entry: Railway Terminus
1902
On loan from Glasgow Mackintosh

The Soane Medallion was a student prize offered annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects, the winner of which received £100 for six months foreign travel. All the entries for the Medallion were submitted and judged anonymously, identified only by mottoes or aliases. Mackintosh's was marked with a 'green device', which according to The Builder resembled 'a conventional representation of three tadpoles'.

Only one unfinished drawing remains of the railway terminus design which is unlikely to have formed part of Mackintosh's submission. His design is known chiefly through reproductions of his drawings published in the British Architect. The British Architect gave a mixed verdict of the station: 'If the design marked with a green device is not practical or exhilarating, it is at all events very clever.'

The same journal went on to publish Mackintosh's drawings over the next two months, with a more generous assessment: 'This design, whether traditionally satisfying for a railway station or not, has at all events much more conspicuous architectural merit than that which was selected for the first place in the competition. The great roof is frankly and agreeably expressed, and there is a homogeneity and quality of proportion about the whole design which certainly did not distinguish the permeated design.’

The most favourable review appeared in Building News, where Mackintosh's design was described as a 'clever and spirited set of drawings' in 'a freely-treated Late Gothic style'.

Glasgow International Exhibition 1901 Competition: Designs for a Concert Hall
1902
On loan from Glasgow Mackintosh

Designs for a Concert Hall formed part of Mackintosh’s submission to the Glasgow International Exhibition Competition in 1901. While the first one was rather conventional, the second one, known as the Alternative Concert Hall, was such a ground-breaking design that it would be hard to compare the two buildings. This is possibly why Mackintosh chose to submit both entries to the competition.

Perhaps of most interest to us today is the domed roof of the alternative concert hall. Thomas Howarth, in his book Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Modern Movement (Routledge; 2nd edition 1977) suggested that the architect may have intended there to be twelve large cast-iron roof trusses resting on the corresponding buttresses on the external wall, but the drawings seem to indicate a clear roof span of about fifty-five metres. It is difficult to imagine how this could have been possible at the time.